ROBERT OF BRUNNE'S HANDLING SIN.*
Ma. Funtuvarz has just brought out a most interesting specimen of our early literature. Robert of Brunne's treatise on Handlyng Spine is a mediteval "whole duty of man," and has the great advantage over modern theology of being written in verse, and crowded with anecdote and illustration. The verse, of course, has no high poetical interest, but as a specimen of early metres and early English the present publication is of high antiquarian value. It is, in fact, the first rhymed poem of any length in our In ouage, and serves to bridge the interval between Layamon and Michael of Nortligate.
* Robert of Brunne's Handtpsy Bynpe (written A.D. 1303), with the French Treatise on which it is Founded. Edited by F. J. Furuivall, Esq., A.B. Printed for the Rox- burgh Club. London ; J. B. Nichols and Rona. Written purposely for the unlettered men who could not understand French or Latin, and for the large class who liked to hear tales and rhymes "yn gamys and festys and at the ale," it has the homely and popular style which yeomen and working men could appreciate. Viewed from another side, it is curious evidence of the care Which the better men of the mediawal clergy took to make religion at- tractive in order that it might be all-absorbing. The world aboat them was running after tournaments and grotesque miracle-plays, " daunces, karols, somour games," in which the sanctuary itself was not always respected, and the most sacred vestments of the priest were liable to be used in his parish as stage-properties. A disciplinarian like Grostete endeavoured to hew away the abuse, root and branch, and the minute and sweepino.b regulations which appear in his letters and constitutions against that " execrable custom," "the feast of fools," against mystery-plays, and even against all 'games in which a prize was to be given, are a curious anticipation of sixteenth-century Pu- ritanism. Robert of Brunne was wiser in his generation, and while he seems cordially to have disliked the minstrels, who rivalled the clergy in popular influence, he was willing to compromise with the secular need of amusement. His model parisliioner may "in the Church through his reason play the resurrection .. , and he may play without plyglite (i.e. without being impleaded) how God was born in yule night." He may also enjoy sacred music, as David and Bishop Gros- tete used it to drive the devil away. For his leisure hours he may take Robert Brunne's tales, and chances that have happed for sin." They are all of unquestionable authenticity, for all have been found in books or witnessed by the poet's informants. As the order taken is that of the ten commandments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven sacraments, it will easily be understood that the composition of the book is not highly artistic. In brief, it is a long rambling commentary, so arranged and so spiced with stories, that almost every page catches the eye by a quaint morality or an apt illus- tration.
The first feature that strikes the reader in examining Robert of Brunne's stories is the evident character of antiquity which they bear. Clearly they.were no mere product of the fourteenth century, but have been derived from sonic older treasury of' anecdote. Names like Makayre, Lucretius, Taugabaton, and Troylus betray their
Southern and Eastern e It is an interesting inquiry to find out whence they were derived. i
. Mr. Furnivall shows n his preface that Robert of Brunne freely tampered with his original, the "Manuel des Pechiez," omitting, much of Wadington's theology and six of his stories, but making ample amends by inserting fourteen illustrations of his own. Even-Wadin„gton was not the first in the field, as he seems to have worked on the lines of an old poem, " Floretus," which has been ascribed to St. Bernard, though here the resemblance is rather of plan than of handling, and cannot be pressed. With stories of course we stand on more certain ground. Out of some seventy, which the Handlyny of Synne contains, eight are drawn from the Bible, twelve from the 'Vitas Patrum," the " Acta Sanctortun," or the "Greek Menology," three from Gregory the Great's "Dialogues," and three from Bede, while six others can be illustrated from various sources. Besides this, eleven out of Robert of Brunne's additions appear to be local legends of the eastern countries, or derived from some conventual collection. There can be little doubt that three- fourths of his illustrations might be traced to an earlier century than his own, if the labour of looking them up were worth taking. But the facts as they stand are sufficient to show how much of our me- diEeval hagiology was exotic. One of Bede's most marvellous narra- tives relates how a captive's chains fell off whenever his brother said mass for his soul, and is told by the historian as a fact that hap- pened during his own boyhood, in the north country, where he lived. Nothing, seemingly, can be more precise, and Bede's veracity is beyond question, but the story was undoubtedly derived from the "Dialogues" of Gregory the Great, in which it occurs with the same names and incidents, and which were written a hundred years earlier. In the same way an account in Mahnesbury, of testing two bodies to know which was a saint's by placing a dead man between them, who was half restored on the side nearest to the saint, is told by him of St. Martin of Tours, and was borrowed by St. Martin's biographers from Eusebius. The whole history of mankind shows that it is easier to adapt than to invent. There are jokes in "Joe Miller" to this day which may be traced back to Cicero ; the sensation novel is at least as old as the "Ethiopics" of Heliodorus ; and Erasmus, Rabelais, and Shakspeare, who were certainly not the least original men of their times, would have to make strange restitution if they gave back all they have plundered from antiquity. Not, of course, that modern writers have been a bit more scrupulous. One of Balzac's cleverest stories is an Oriental apologue ; Goethe's little poem of the "Ma- gician's Pupil" (to give only one instance), is taken from Lucian; and Gogol, the great .Russian novelist, has written one of the best vampire stories in existence,—which has been known from time immemorial to the old wives of Hungary. The student of history is almost driven to the conclusion that mankind were created with a given stock of stories, which have been corrupted and transformed but never multi- plied. Perhaps, however, it is safer to take refuge in the theory of a German professor, who has analyzed all the possible plots of a novel, and reduced them, we believe, to some sixty-three.
How a story is modernized may be easily shown by instances from Robert of Brunne. The tale of " Pers the Usurer" relates how a poor beggar laid his fellows a wager that he would get something out of miser Pers, "be he never so :gryl ne gryin.' He chose his moment for begging as an ass-load of bread was coming to the house, and Pers finding no stone at hand, was improvident enough in his anger to hurl a loaf at the supplicant, who thus won his bet.
Presently Pers saw a vision of judgment, in which this one in- voluntary alms outweighed all his evil deeds. Converted by this to charity, he clothed a naked beggar with his own kirtle, "and bade him wear it for his love." The man, however, sold it,. either as too costly or too bad for his own use ; and Pers was disheartened at seeing this, as a sign that the beggar did not think him worth pray- ing for. But he was comforted by a fair dream, in which he saw God himself clad in his kirtle, and telling him that as it was given to the poor, it was given to Him. Pers, on waking, sold himself into -bondage, and gave the price for which he was bought to the Tssor. This story has been pretty literally copied from the life of St. John the Almsgiver, in the "Vitse Patrum," where the hero is " dominus Petrus," a farmer of taxes and patrician, who is compelled to make his own slave (a notary) sell him in a far country, that he may not be recognized, and who is accordingly taken from Egypt to Constantinople. Robert of Brunne evidently wrote with the book before him, and, on the whole, is very exact, but he contrives to Anglicize all he touches, and "Rich Pers, the ucherer" (usurer), with his clerk, seems native to English soil, Lill we come suddenly on mention of the emperor, and seem to find ourselves in fairy land. One very dramatic story describes how a Jew over- hears the devils taking stock of all the evil they had done lately on earth. Those who have only done vulgar service to their prince by getting up a storm, exciting a war, or bringing bloodshed into a bridal party, are flogged for their remissness; but one who, after forty years' temptation, has induced a bishop to pat a nun on the back, is kissed, in token of high approbation, by Satan, and placed at his side on the throne. Here the original "Vibe Patram" trans- forms the Jew into "a son of a priest of idols," makes the offender a monk instead of a bishop, heightens the sin, and represents the devil as placing his own crown on his servant's head. These little varia- tions mark the changes of nearly a thousand years, and the difference of locality. The Jew was the bugbear of English orthodoxy, as the Pagan was of Alexandrian, and the bishop was the most venerable personage of the English hierarchy, while the spirit of Egyptian or- thodoxy made the monk of greater account than bishop or patriarch. It would be idle to look for any important statements of doctrine in a popular manual like the Handlyng of Synne. Mr.Furnivall, in a very spirited preface, notices the great stress laid on the duty of charity and the righteous invectives against the disorders of feudal times, when the poor and women lay terribly at the mercy of nobles and knights. But these are mere common-places of the middle ages in every country; it is Robert of Brunne's incidental sketches of social life which make his work invaluable to the student of manners. "The earl and knight at their robbery; the lord in his grasping;' the sick man in his oaths, his adultery, his gluttony, sloth, and indulgence to his children in their insolent ways; the landowner in his covetous- n. ess ; the priest with his 'mare' or concubine ; the judge and assizer in their harshness ; the lawyer with his wicked counsels ; the merchant at his usury; the trader at his tricks ; the scold in her I. ousehold ;:the flunkey of the time in his riotous supper; the poor in their sufferings; the bearded bucks; the beauties with their saffron wimples and whitened faces, all pass under his review, and none without those individualizing touches, that show he had studied from the life And one can fancy his monk's disgust at hear- ing men in church chattering, telling tales, asking where they can get the best ale, and thinking what much better fun it would be at the ale-house or larking with girls, as well as share his indigna- tion at seeing poor men kept shivering all day in the cold, crying at rich men's gates for alms, or getting them only with beating and abuse." Among special English sins, Robert of Brunne notices impatience of reproof and envy. Mr. Furnivall would like to explain away the latter as righteous discontent with abuses, but we fear it must be taken in the worst sense, as the hatred of superiority, both from the plain sense of the word and from the concurrent testimony of other writers. The keeping the Saturday afternoon holy to the Virgin can scarcely have been a special English custom. The words "in England namely" are ambiguous, as "namely" may mean either "for instance,' or " specially," but Robert of Brunue's illustration is derived from Auvergne, and the attempt to make a sort of second Sunday on Saturday is noticed by Gregory the Great in his letters, as an Italian superstition. Mr. Furnivall has very much enhanced the value of his labours by an analytical table of contents, and an excellent glossary, giving most of the English words for which this book is supposed to be as yet the first printed authority. Those who imagine that our vernacular was exclusively Anglo-Saxon in the fourteenth century, will do well to glance through this list, and count the Norman words with which it is studded. "Affray," terror from " effrayer," " aloign" to carry off from "eloigner," " bayte," desire, from " bayer," " corsaint," holy body, " dysour," story-teller, or " diseur," "getteur," a dicer from "icteur," and " pele " for pole, from pele, are a few specimens of the mixed language which Gower and Chaucer inherited. As curious in another way is the term "slicked," or "smoothed," one of the many national growths like "fix," "lynch," and "gloaming," which we insist on calling Americanisms. Probably the words of every-day life among us are more Saxon now than they have been at any pre-
/ an vious date sine the Norm conquest, the gradual processes of time, and perhaps an instinct of nationality, having gradually purged our language o much that was foreign to it. It is in politics, in philosophy, and in the processes of manufactures, that we are forced to borrow words for new facts, and a single science like botany enriches our dictionaries with a thousand barbarous names. A remedy is past praying for, but it is something to know that we gain a little in one direction if we lose a great deal in another.
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